Cryptonomicon

The one thing that is special about this party is that two tar-covered cables, each about the thickness of a baseball bat, are running up onto the quarterdeck. If you go to the rail and look down you can see them disappear into the brine. The cable ends meet on a tabletop in the middle of the deck, where a technician, flown in from Hong Kong and duded up in a tuxedo, sits with a box of tools, working on the splice. He is also working on a big hangover, but that is fine with Randy since he knows that it's all fake--the cables are just scraps, their loose ends trailing in the water alongside the yacht. The real splice was performed yesterday and is already lying on the bottom of the sea with bits running through it.

There is another man on the quarterdeck, mostly staring at Bata'an and Corregidor but also keeping an eye on Randy. The moment Randy notices him, this man nods as if checking something off a list in his head, stands up, walks over, and joins him. He is wearing a very ornate uniform, the U.S. Navy equivalent of black tie. He is mostly bald, and what hair he does have is battleship grey, and shorn to a length of perhaps five millimeters. As he walks toward Randy, several Filipinos watch him with obvious curiosity.

"Randy," he says. Medals clink together as he grips Randy's right hand and shakes it. He looks to be around fifty, but he has the skin of an eighty-year-old Bedouin. He has a lot of ribbons on his chest, and many of them are red and yellow, which are colors that Randy vaguely associates with Vietnam. Above his pocket is a little plastic nameplate reading, SHAFTOE. "Don't be deceived, Randy," says Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe, "I'm not on active duty. Retired eons ago. But I'm still entitled to wear this uniform. And it's a hell of a lot easier than going out and trying to find a tuxedo that fits me."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Pleasure's mine. Where'd you get yours, by the way?"

"My tuxedo?"

"Yeah."

"My partner had it made."

"Your business partner, or your sexual partner?"

"My business partner. At the moment, I am without a sexual partner." Doug Shaftoe nods impassively. "It is telling that you have not obtained one in Manila. As our host did, for example."

Randy looks into the ballroom at Victoria Vigo, who, if she were any more radiant, would cause paint to peel from the walls and windowpanes to sag like caramel.

"I guess I'm just shy, or something," Randy says.

"Are you too shy to listen to a business proposition?"

"Not at all."

"My daughter asserts that you and our host might lay some more cables around here in coming years."

"In business, people rarely plan to do a thing only once," Randy says. "It messes up the spreadsheets."

"You are aware, by now, that the water in this area is shallow."

"Yeah."

"You know that cables cannot be laid in shallow water without extremely detailed, high-resolution sidescan sonar surveys."

"Yes."

"I would like to perform those surveys for you, Randy."

"I see."

"No, I don't think you do see. But I want you to see, and so I'm going to explain it."

"Okay," Randy says. "Should I bring my partner out?"

"The concept I am about to convey to you is very simple and does not require two first-rate minds in order to process it," Doug Shaftoe says.

"Okay. What is the concept?"

"The detailed survey will be just chock-full of new information about what is on the floor of the ocean in this part of the world. Some of that information might be valuable. More valuable than you imagine."

"Ah," Randy says. "You mean that it might be the kind of thing that your company knows how to capitalize on."

"That's right," says Doug Shaftoe. "Now, if you hire one of my competitors to perform your survey, and they stumble on this kind of information, they will not tell you about it. They will exploit it themselves. You will not know that they have found anything and you will not profit from it. But if you hire Semper Marine Services, I will tell you about whatever I find, and I will cut you and your company in on a share of any proceeds."

"Hmmmm," Randy says. He is trying to figure out how to do a poker face, but he knows that Shaftoe sees right through him.

"On one condition," Doug Shaftoe says.

"I suspected there might be a condition."

"Every hook that's worth a damn has a barb. This is the barb."

"What is it?" Randy asks.

"We keep it a secret from that son of a bitch," Doug Shaftoe says, jerking his thumb at Hubert Kepler. "Because if the Dentist finds out, then he and the Bolobolos will just split the entire thing up between them and we'll see nothing. There's even a chance we would end up dead."

"Well, the being dead part is something that we will certainly have to think about," Randy says, "but I will convey your proposal to my partner."

Chapter 14 TUBE